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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24945838">How Far We've Come</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherCricket/pseuds/JustAnotherCricket'>JustAnotherCricket</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Zombies Run!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Mild Language, Pre-Season/Series 01, Sad Sam, Some blood and gore, Violence, angst but with a pseudo happy ending, canon-compliant as far as I know, lots of zombies, mild season 4 spoilers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:21:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,734</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24945838</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherCricket/pseuds/JustAnotherCricket</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Yao is on the way home from uni when the zombie apocalypse breaks out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sam Yao &amp; Everyone, Sam Yao &amp; Janine De Luca</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>How Far We've Come</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sam Yao had been on the road for three hours, and he still had no idea how to tell them. God knows he had tried. Even though it was all he could think about, here he was, twenty minutes away from home and no closer to a plan than when he had left school. Whole stretches of road passed unobserved and unremembered as he tried out different versions of the conversation.</p><p>“Oh, hi, Mum. Dad. Um, here’s the thing, there’s something I really need to talk to you about. No, no, it’s not bad—it’s good, really, when you think about it—okay, maybe not good, at least not great…okay, I guess maybe it’s a little bad.”</p><p>Too rambly. New tactic.</p><p>“Hey, how’s it going? So I was thinking about stuff—you know, like my life—and I was thinking…maybe this whole engineering business just isn’t for me.”</p><p>Not even close.</p><p>Come on, Sam, he thought. Why not tell them the truth?</p><p>“I know you guys want me to be an engineer.”</p><p>Oh no. He could see his dad’s do or die eyes, the eyes of a first generation immigrant who never let anyone or anything get in the way of something he wanted to do, waiting patiently. Expectantly. Hopefully.</p><p>They had too much faith in him.</p><p>“But, um…I’m failing. I’m failing the program.”</p><p>His dad would be silent. His mum might cry. There was so much more he could say. He could say that he wished he were lazy, he wished he were always out partying, because that would be something he could fix. He could say that he wished the answer were just study more, work harder, stop taking things for granted. He could tell them that he spent his weeknights poring over dense textbooks, blinking in the harsh LED light, trying to untwist pages and pages of knotty paragraphs. He could admit that all his weekends passed in a panicked haze of reading and re-reading, working and re-working. He could say that after two years of uni, he still didn’t have any real friends. He could say that some nights, going to bed at four AM, he wished he wouldn’t wake up. He could break down and tell his parents that he had tried so hard to make himself into what they wanted him to be, but he couldn’t because he was a failure and his life was just like all those equations he couldn’t solve. He could say that he would much rather work in radio. Maybe host a talk show, or be the DJ for a music station.</p><p>He wouldn’t say it, of course. He would probably cry instead, and that would disappoint his dad even more than knowing that his son wanted to do something as stupid as host a radio program.</p><p>He could just…not tell them. He could run away or something. Become a—</p><p>Something broke through his thoughts. A solitary figure standing in the middle of the road, not thirty meters away.</p><p>Sam yelped, slammed on the brakes. His car screeched as it slowed, and he swerved hard to the left, barely managing to avoid hitting the figure head on. But before Sam had time to register what’s happening, there was a blur of motion—something hit his window with a thud—and just like that, a twisted mass was falling away in the rearview mirror.</p><p>“No!” Sam screamed. “No no no no no!”</p><p>He pulled over, threw open the door, and sprinted back toward the fallen body. Definitely human. Definitely hit by Sam’s car.</p><p>“Oh my God,” Sam said breathlessly, kneeling next to the figure. Close up, he could see that it was a middle-aged man, and he was in bad shape. One of his legs bent the wrong way. His arm twisted unnaturally around his head. His face was covered in blood. “Please be alive. Please be alive.”</p><p>As if in response to Sam’s plea, the man moaned.</p><p>Sam nearly cried in relief.</p><p>“Oh good. I mean, not good! You’re hurt! But you’re alive. You’re not dead. That’s...that’s good news, isn’t it?”</p><p>The man didn’t answer.</p><p>“Okay, you...you just sit tight. I’m going to call 999.”</p><p>Still no answer. Sam pulled out his mobile and dialed the number. It rang for a few seconds, and then click. No one picked up. He tried again, and the same thing happened.</p><p>“How can no one pick up a 999 call?” Sam stared down at the man, who still hadn’t moved. He was starting to panic again. “Okay, sir, I think...I can’t reach anyone to help us. So I think I have to drive you to a hospital. Which means I have to move you.”</p><p>Another low moan. For some reason, the air felt colder.</p><p>“Please let me know if this hurts at all,” Sam said, and reached down to gently grasp behind the man’s back. But as he threaded his arm between the man’s side and elbow, the man’s arm fell to the ground with a slight thud.</p><p>Sam sprang back in shock.</p><p>“I tore your arm off!” he screamed.</p><p>Sam stared at the arm, detached from the man’s body, lying on the ground. The man didn’t move. He didn’t scream. He let out another long groan.</p><p>For the first time, what had happened in the car replayed in Sam’s 	mind. He had been well out of the way. He shouldn’t have hit him. Sam remembered the motion, the thud against the window, and realized…</p><p>The man had jumped at the car as it passed.</p><p>“Okay,” Sam said. “Okay. Um. You need help.”</p><p>The man’s leg kicked out, a sudden motion that made Sam jump. His still attached arm reached out and pushed him up to a sitting position. Awkwardly lurching to one side, he lifted his head.</p><p>Sam could see his eyes now. They were open, looking forward, but not seeing anything. Like the staring, open eyes of a dead thing.</p><p>“Okay, sir, you’re scaring me a little,” Sam said, scooting backward. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you—”</p><p>With a gurgle, the man lunged forward, hands outstretched, toward Sam. Sam screamed, stumbling to his feet, and made a dash for his car. When he reached the vehicle he stood for just a moment, fumbling for his keys, and glanced behind him.</p><p>The not-man was staggering toward him, swaying and dragging one leg behind him. For the first time, Sam realized that his skin was an unnatural grey. </p><p>Sam’s shaking hands finally found his keys. He dove inside his car and pulled the door shut, just as the not-man threw himself at the car. Sam stuck the key in the ignition and started the car. The not-man banged on the window, staring at Sam with dead eyes.</p><p>Sam shoved the gas pedal into the floor and the car lurched forward, sending the not-man flying backward. The car sped faster and faster. Home was only twenty minutes away. He could call the police from a landline. Someone would fix this. Someone would explain. </p><p>Home was on a property out in the country, somewhat isolated and far from the city. As Sam drove through the thickening trees toward his house, his breathing began to slow. So did his driving. Maybe he had imagined it. Maybe he was so worked up about talking to his parents that he had gone a little crazy. It was a weird thing to hallucinate, but still…</p><p>Sam pulled into his driveway and ran up the path to the front door. </p><p>“Mum!” he called, stepping into the foyer. “Dad!”</p><p>For a moment, there was no sound. Then, from upstairs, he heard the distinct sound of a woman’s hoarse sobbing.</p><p>“Mum?” he called again, louder this time.</p><p>For the briefest instant, there was a catch in the sobs—and then he heard his mum’s hoarse, terrified shriek: “Sam, run!”</p><p>Sam barely had time to register what his mum was saying before he heard something else that distracted him. A low, soft moan from one of the downstairs rooms.</p><p>“No,” Sam said softly. “Please no.”</p><p>For a moment, he lingered in the doorway, paralyzed with fear. Every limb in his body felt frozen, like it would never move again. Then he remembered his mum’s sobs, and the moan, and he knew what he had to do.</p><p>He looked around the room for a weapon, and his gaze settled on a lamp, sitting on a table by the coat rack. Sam grabbed it, yanking the cord out of the wall, and began slowly creeping down the hall.</p><p>The moan came again, louder this time. It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen, so Sam inched his way toward the door. Louder. Whatever it was, it was in here.</p><p>Sam paused, trying to slow his breathing. He was definitely panicking. </p><p>Calm down. It’s okay. There’s an explanation.</p><p>But what if there wasn’t? What if this was like all those equations he couldn’t solve? All those engineering problems he couldn’t figure out? What if he never understood?</p><p>He had to stop thinking. He had to save his mum.</p><p>Three. Two. One.</p><p>Sam burst through the kitchen door, lamp brandished between white knuckles, ready for whatever monster was inside.</p><p>He wasn’t ready to see his dad.</p><p>But there he was, turned away toward the cupboards. His bathrobe was unmistakable. It had to be him.</p><p>Sam lowered his lamp slightly.</p><p>“Dad,” he said, half in relief, half as a question.</p><p>His dad turned around, and Sam drew in a stiff breath. It was his dad, and it wasn’t. It was the same grey skin, the same lurching tilt, the same dead eyes. His dad’s patient, expectant, hopeful eyes, wiped of all recognition. </p><p>“Dad,” Sam said in desperation. “Dad, it’s me. It’s Sam.”</p><p>His dad opened his mouth and let out a horrible groan. For the first time, it crossed Sam’s mind that the groan sounded...hungry.</p><p>In a quick, jerky movement, his dad shuffled toward Sam, arms outstretched as if to embrace him. Sam backed away—through the door, a few steps into the hall.</p><p>“Dad!” Sam screamed. “It’s me!”</p><p>He turned to run, but stumbled and fell. As he scrambled back to his feet, his dad reached him. Two wrinkly hands, drenched in cold sweat, grasped Sam’s shoulders. Sam’s dad opened his mouth and lowered his whole head, as if to sink his teeth into Sam’s cheek.</p><p>Instinct kicked in, but Sam was never quite sure how. Maybe it was reflexive. Maybe, somewhere deep inside, he knew this wasn’t his dad anymore. Or maybe he, Sam Yao, was a killer just like anyone else. But however it happened, Sam pulled back and swung the lamp’s sharp tip as hard as he could, directly into his dad’s eye.</p><p>His dad groaned again and his grip on Sam loosened. Sam seized the opportunity to jerk his body in one fluid motion so that his dad slammed against the wall. Then Sam swung the lamp again. And again. And again.</p><p>The fourth swing cracked the skull.</p><p>His dad stopped moving. Blood and brain matter started oozing out of the hole Sam had left.</p><p>Sam froze. Everything in him felt like crumbling into nothingness. His breathing was shaky, and quick, and far away. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t Sam Yao. He hadn’t killed his dad.</p><p>He turned around, slipping in blood, and ran down the hall, around the corner, up the stairs.</p><p>“Mum!” he shouted. “Mum, where are you?”</p><p>She would know. She would wake him up. This was a dream. This wasn’t happening.</p><p>He followed the sobbing to her bedroom. She was huddled on the floor in the closet. Sam crawled down next to her and wrapped his arms around her. She was crying so hard that she was coughing. Actually, she was mostly coughing.</p><p>“Mum,” he said again. “Mum, what’s happening?”</p><p>She coughed an awful, wet cough that came from her lungs.</p><p>“Sam…” But she couldn’t finish. </p><p>“I hit someone on the way home. But he wasn’t a someone. He was gray, and dead, and—”</p><p>His mum cried harder. Sam held her tighter.</p><p>“I’m sorry, but I—what—what the bloody hell is going on?” He was shaking. He could barely hear himself think, let alone talk. “What happened to—”</p><p>“Stop,” she said, then broke into coughing. “Stop now,” she said when she had finished. “I don’t have...I don’t have much time.”</p><p>“Before what?”</p><p>“Sam…” More coughing. “Something...something happened. It was on the news. A virus. It does something to people. It makes them…”</p><p>She coughed into her sleeve, and when she drew it away, blood was soaking into the fabric.</p><p>“It makes them monsters. Your dad...your dad was out when it happened. He came back, he had already—he had been bitten.”</p><p>“How? Why?”</p><p>She shook her head. “He came back, I didn’t know, he...he bit me.”</p><p>There was about half a second before Sam understood these words. Half a second before the reality of the situation crashed down on him.</p><p>“No,” he said. “No.” For some reason, his far away voice didn’t sound upset, even to himself.</p><p>“I feel like I’m burning,” she said hoarsely. “It feels like dying.”</p><p>She laughed, then coughed.</p><p>“I guess it is.”</p><p>“We’ll find something,” Sam told her. “There has to be a cure, or something.”</p><p>“I can feel it,” she said. “It won’t be long. I’m going to be like them. Like him.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“You can’t stop it, Sammy.” She hugged him a little tighter. “I’m sorry. I need you to…”</p><p>“No,” he interrupted. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t do it.</p><p>“I don’t want to hurt you! I don’t want to hurt anyone.”</p><p>She drew a deep, shuddering, hacking breath.</p><p>“Please. Don’t let me be a monster. Please.”</p><p>Sam was crying. Deep, real, choking sobs that his dad would have hated. If he was just good enough, or smart enough, or talented enough, he could find another way out. He could solve the equation and make things turn out nice and neat like his classmates did. He could invent a better ending.</p><p>But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t.</p><p>“Please.” Her skin was a sallow tint of gray. “Please.”</p><p>Sam reached down and picked up the lamp, gripping it harder. He could hardly see through the tears. “I love you, Mum.”</p><p>“I—”</p><p>But her words were swallowed up in a deep, heavy groan. It wasn’t his mum’s voice. He could feel the heat radiating off her.</p><p>Sam stumbled to his feet and lifted the lamp.</p><p>Fifteen minutes later, Sam was staggering out to his car. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t think. So he drove. He drove back down the road, through the forest, toward town. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a single thought had formed: at least in town there would be more people. People who could help. People who, maybe, hadn’t turned yet.</p><p>There were more figures, drifting in and out of the woods. Some of them threw themselves at Sam’s car. Some of them just stared with their glassy dead eyes. Sam ignored them all.</p><p>Town was a mistake. The streets were swarming with them—big and small, man and woman, young and old, poor and rich. They jumped his car. There were so many piled on the road that he physically could not drive anymore.</p><p>So Sam flung the door open, sending three of them flying into the rest of the crowd. For maybe five seconds, there was a clear path from his car to the sidewalk.</p><p>And for those five seconds, Sam ran.</p><p>He sprinted to the sidewalk, jumped over the disembodied limbs lying on the concrete, and pulled on the doors of the street shop. Locked.</p><p>“Let me in!” he screamed. Nothing.</p><p>His time was up. They were coming. There was nowhere to hide. </p><p>Then Sam’s gaze fell upon a wheelie bin, sitting on the side of the road, still waiting dutifully for a binman who would never come. He took two more long strides, opened the bin, and dove inside.</p><p>There in the darkness, Sam waited. He could hear the moaning, shuffling, scraping outside. He could hear shattering glass and screaming people. He could hear children crying for their parents and parents calling for their children. He could hear street preachers making their final calls for repentance. He could hear shrieks of pain as people were bitten, and then the groans as they jerked back to not-life.</p><p>And eventually, the human sounds were gone. The undead sounds remained. No one tried to open the bin (maybe because the smell of trash masked Sam’s smell), but it wasn’t safe to come out.</p><p>Sam curled up into a tight ball and cried silently. He cried until the unnatural moans became white noise, and the sound of death lulled him to sleep.</p><p>When he woke up, groggy and confused about why he was cramped in a tight space with the foul smell of garbage wafting around him, it took a moment for everything to come spilling back. When it did, he cried again for a few minutes. And then he lost the energy to do even that.</p><p>According to his watch, it was about 3AM. He was a little hungry, and very thirsty. After digging around as quietly as possible, Sam found a plastic cup half full of what had probably once been ice in some kind of iced coffee. He drank a little, and saved the rest.</p><p>More hours passed. Sam drifted in and out of consciousness. When the thirst was too much for him to bear, he took another sip. Eventually he stopped feeling hungry at all. He could still hear the moaning, so he knew he couldn’t leave the bin. Not until he had a shot at escaping without turning into one of them.</p><p>Eventually, the conscious hours became nothing but waking dreams, and Sam couldn’t tell the difference between night and day. He’d probably die here. He might as well. It sounded like there was nothing left outside to live for anyway. As Sam drifted into unconsciousness at 4:30AM on the third day, his last thought was, There are probably worse ways to die.<br/>___________________________________________________________________</p><p>“We’d better head back. They’re expecting us.”</p><p>“They’re expecting us back with supplies, Mr. Deaubl. And we haven’t done particularly well on that front.”</p><p>“This place was obviously crawling just an hour ago. Just in case any of them are still lingering around...we need to be quick.”</p><p>“And we are. Just let me check this last bin.”</p><p>The lid flew open, and Sam flinched as blinding sunlight streamed onto his trash-covered body.</p><p>“Good lord.”</p><p>It was a woman’s voice, sharp and surprised. Sam squinted upward at the face bending over him, silhouetted against the white light of the sun. </p><p>“Hi,” he croaked. </p><p>“Get back!” a man’s voice called in alarm. “What if it’s—”</p><p>“It’s not one of them, Mr. Deaubl. He can talk.” Sam’s eyes began to adjust, and he could see the woman’s face in detail. She was attractive, but in an almost frightening way, as if someone had painted her using strict, harsh strokes. </p><p>“Who are you?” It was more an order than a question.</p><p>“Sam,” he said, his voice rasping against his own ears. “Sam Yao.”</p><p>A man’s face appeared next to the woman. His expression was somewhat softer.</p><p>“Let me help you out of there,” he said. “My name is Evan, and this is Janine. Are you hurt?”</p><p>“Don’t...don’t think so,” Sam said truthfully as Evan helped him clamber out of the wheelie bin. As Sam tried to put weight on his legs, they crumbled beneath him. Evan caught his arm before he hit the ground too hard.</p><p>“It was good to meet you, Mr. Yao,” Janine said in the kind of tone you might expect at a corporate black tie event. “We should probably be going now.”</p><p>“Janine!” Evan looked horrified. “We can’t leave him here.”</p><p>“Please,” Sam said, kneeling because his legs were still too weak to stand. “Please. Take me with you.”</p><p>“Mr. Deaubl, maybe you’re forgetting that you and the rest of our acquaintances are taking up residence in my farmhouse, and that I certainly don’t have room for every survivor in Britain!”</p><p>“Please,” Sam repeated. He probably looked like a frightened child, kneeling there on the concrete, but he didn’t care. “It’s been three days.”</p><p>“You were in that bin...for three days?” Maybe it was Sam’s imagination, but Janine’s expression seemed to soften just a little. She took another long look at the bedraggled, smelly, trash-stained figure that was Sam Yao.</p><p>“What did you do before all this, Mr. Yao? I don’t have room for helpless mouths to feed, but perhaps you could be useful to us,” she offered. </p><p>Sam stared up at her. </p><p>I tried to be an engineer, but I failed. I wanted to be a good student, but I couldn’t. No matter what I did, I couldn’t make my parents proud of me. I can’t do anything right. I’m useless. I’m nobody.</p><p>He cleared his throat.</p><p>“I used to work in radio,” he said. “If that helps.”</p><p>“Janine,” Evan said quietly. “The Major’s idea—the survival system with runners and radio operators—”</p><p>“Yes, I know, Mr. Deaubl.” Janine turned back to Sam. “Well, Mr. Yao. This is quite the coincidence, but we just so happen to need people with radio expertise. Why don’t you come with us?”</p><p>Evan helped Sam to his feet. Carefully, Sam stretched his arms and legs. The warm morning sun melted into his skin. Somehow, even though everything was wrong and the street was covered in broken glass and nothing would be normal ever again, a surge of hope welled up in his chest. He broke into a grin.</p><p>“It’s such a nice day,” he said. “Isn’t it?”</p><p>Confused, Janine and Evan glanced at one another.</p><p>“I suppose,” Janine said. “I hadn’t thought about it. Now let’s go.”</p><p>“Wait,” Sam said.</p><p>Irritation flashed across Janine’s face. “What is it, Mr. Yao?”</p><p>Sam threw out his arms in a wide gesture. “What is this? What’s happening? What are we running away from?”</p><p>The corners of Janine’s mouth twitched. Sam had a feeling that was the closest she ever got to a smile.</p><p>“The end of the world, Mr. Yao. Welcome to the end of the world.”</p>
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